


Chroma

by SkyHighDisco



Series: Grey Novelette [5]
Category: The Grand Tour (TV) RPF, Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Afterlife, Reunion, Show reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:14:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26184760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyHighDisco/pseuds/SkyHighDisco
Summary: Based on James' little quip from “Our Man in Japan”, episode 3 while he is in 'Borderless' digital art museum:“Wow, I hope that’s what it’s like being dead, it’ll be fantastic!”
Relationships: Jeremy Clarkson & James May
Series: Grey Novelette [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832563
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Chroma

* * *

It’s simple.

It’s so very simple.

James knows he’s not anywhere familiar. One second everything is blank. Dull. Achingly pressing. Seconds stretching through so many wormholes that their end will never exist.

It hurts, the ugly, formless, choking dark, and it’s uncomfortably familiar from something he cannot remember, but knows it wasn’t going to end well and for a moment, he becomes utterly terrified that he will end up shackled between aggravation and fear on a train with never-ending route.

But it only lasts a breath, this fear. Only a brief, ubiquitous droplet of a second.

There it is, then, weightlessness. Indisputable absence of space and time. He floats neither in water, nor on air, but the spectacular combination of the two and he is carried as the vast, black void desires, but at the same time knowing exactly where, and it’s nowhere because he _is_ nowhere.

Peace. Silence. Serenity is what he feels. No ache at all, physical or mental. His ears are open and ready, rich and curious. His eyes, closed; opening them wouldn’t make difference, so he keeps them closed. They were open for a long, long time. Drinking in beauty and reverie, giving kindness and love, in their own way.

Droplet of a second.

Droplets.

They fall from nowhere and land nowhere. No, they land, because there is a soft, sizzling, resonating _plop_ when they make contact and it’s an exquisite, amusing sound for his curious ears and he opens his eyes so they can join them.

Droplets, they are. Slow, elongated, brilliant bright droplets of all sorts of colours; blue, pink, green, red, yellow, purple, orange and all their variations; lazing their way down in a manner so slow James can distinguish each and every one of them. They seem to glow in the dark, akin to neon sticks in the night and they all freefall at same pace.

He holds out his hand and one of the passengers finds his palm and as it disperses in a circle of mesmerizing light-blue colours it makes that same sound; like rain hitting the world’s smallest, yet most resonate Tibetan bowl.

James feels excitement building up at the bottom of his stomach and looks around hopefully. Something big is coming. Something bigger and diverse. Driving. Hunch-inducing.

He stretches out his leg down, and, in another moment, touches the firm ground, even though he can’t see the proof of its existence other than droplets being dispersed on its smooth surface. He knows he can push away back up if he wanted to, but he decides firm ground is more familiar, therefore more controllable.

The droplets begin to widen then; spread out in curvy, rhombic shapes as they slow down even more until they hit full stop and warp and twist around themselves in a spinning top-like axis dance.

James lifts both his hands up and they lengthen themselves, merge their tips and suddenly, James is inside a kaleidoscope, embraced from all sides by every neon colour he can and cannot name.

They are never still. As James begins moving, testing that he is really rid of his miserable old body, the colours and shapes follow his movements, changing as he changes pose and no movement of his is abrupt or cacophonic. He moves in harmony with ornate environment and walks around in a circle with one hand and a single finger extended as psychedelic, pulsating rings disappear under him, spiralling and collapsing into themselves, an endless clock.

James paints and crafts with his own hands, and it’s all so beautiful. Makes whatever shape he wants, mind-wrestles it into whatever alternative he wants, does whatever in the world he wants with it. Explodes it into a thousand sparks that disperse in a regular, multi-coloured, firecracker neon disc, holds out both his palms facing down so that it could leak out in a waterfall made of hundreds of thin strings.

The strings burst out in an erratic swarm of synesthetic music, stretched in one cacophonic, ethereal chord, a mess of all sorts of sounds he’s ever and never heard that caress his ears like a long-gone lover remembered with bittersweet, longing fondness; the insatiable kind of longing and jealousy and warmth and envy.

He makes balls of multi-coloured fire, mists of light, stretches of areal silk, splashes of neon water and there is no black and white, there is every possible unwritten, unseen, unfathomable colour in the book, one that makes void a void, eternity unfragile and fabric of space existable.

At one point, something stops this grand architect, who looks down. He can see a shape, a silhouette, a form moving underneath the surface he chose to be the floor. It’s warping the shapes and colours as it moves in much a similar fashion to a black hole moving through the universe and shoving everything away under its tremendous power and hunger.

But this is different. This is something gentle, gleaming, a whale under the surface of the sea, giant, but mild, curious, forgiving – weightless, just like James. Belonging.

He watches the bulge as it passes under his feet, turns to look after it, sees it being shaped by colourful shapes in the darkness, giving it a form, a body, wings, purpose.

It breaks through the surface with no sound at all and takes off into the endless space and James follows its enormity, watches it deform this realm’s constant, wings trailing colour like a brush traces a phantasm mixture over the blind canvas, dispersing it like snow and ember, petals and confetti, dust and rain.

Colour fills James’ eyes to the brim and he leaks neon tears as he laughs.

A blatant lie, a flamboyant truth.

He dances, gyrates, moves flows with this figure like a river and they are caught in an unbreakable, invisible bond that will in fact be broken if it can be seen and he is chasing it and then it is chasing him, he is being guided by some magnetic pull, gliding through the sea of blue, green, pink and yellow, pulled through a sinful desire to create and be one with the beauty in this mystical landscape of interloping, visual and sonic voyage.

He doesn’t remember how it all ends. But it does.

James’ scattered soul is stuck back together in one single, violent jerk and then he becomes aware that the colours are gone. The void is gone. The submissive, eager-to-be-created landscape is gone. Replaced by sky hampered by glorious clouds atop a plain of golden grass.

He looks up. The colour is draining from the giant being and turning to pure, imperial light, the wings are two blinding stars, but James doesn’t shield his eyes. Instead, he clamps them against two orbs of gold he thinks might be the equivalent of a pair of eyes.

“I want back”, he blurts.

The wings travel up and down with slowness a river bridge takes to lift and settle back down.

_Somebody wants to see you_

an angelic feminine voice caresses his mind.

_And I thought you might want to say hello again._

“What? Again?”

Then he hears it.

“Is- is he here? Is he finally here?! Thank fuck. I’ll fucking — oh, shit, bollocks I’m so sorry- -oh, _sorry again, sorry, sorry!_ — I’ll send him back myself, or so help me, _let me see him_!”

James guesses he would feel shivers, goosebumps electrocuting the hairs on his arms and back of his neck at attention, but since he is so far from having a physical body, he can only perceive how the feeling might’ve looked and felt like. Analyses it, scrutinizes every pore, sifts the essence of the sensation, converts it into the root of memory.

Then he sees him. A tall figure half-running, half-jumping absurd lengths, half flying towards him and he cannot understand which is which, but he is getting closer across the field and that voice, yes, that voice is so, so achingly familiar.

“Can you not be slow at least in afterlife? _God_ , May, and He _is_ here, I’ll have you know, I haven’t seen Him yet because you _can’t_ see Him, but I guess He thought it was a joke all the way through to the end and over, but I’ll have you know what I’ve learned here is that time does not exist here which means you don’t have an excuse to be slow anymore.”

Then the figure is closer and James sees an enormous, absurd curl of dark hair, like a single woollen nut and white cardigan jumper over a black turtleneck and suddenly, he is being crashed into and he is hugged right through the edge of consciousness.

James barely remembers to breathe even if he doesn’t have to, but it’s a familiar action that jump-starts him into wrapping his arms around the taller figure and he breathes in, lets the thick curls tickle his nose, caress his fluttering eyelids and he knows whom he holds and squeezes with all he has because it’s _Jeremy_. It’s _Jeremy_.

“Jeremy”, he tests it out loud just to see how it feels because he doesn’t remember when he last said it and he is so, so close to exploding.

“She did it”, Jeremy breathes; maybe James is mistaken when he interprets the sound Jeremy mended in the half-whispered sentence as a sob, but then Jeremy’s arms go firmer around him like James is a helium-filled balloon that is aloof and ready to float off on his own accord. “She really did it.”

Who did what? James is still trying to put himself together, trying to collect the reason he had so carefreely abandoned in the color prism. But seeing and feeling Jeremy against him gives him an additional boost and he opens his mouth again to speed up the process. “Jeremy.”

“Oh, James…” Jeremy backs up and brings their foreheads together and it could be an apocalypse and Jeremy would’ve never done it even if it was the last thing he ever did were they still alive and this is finally enough to bring James entirely back and suddenly the realm of colours seems distant and forgettable and he responds with the same amount of pressure.

“You have no idea… no idea how hard it was…” Jeremy says.

“I know.” James responds in what he hopes is the same measure. He pulls everything he has ever kept hidden out, on the open palms, here, take it Jeremy because it’s always been yours.

“Not having you two beside me in this beautiful, beautiful place… James…” No, Jeremy can’t tear up. Jeremy doesn’t tear up. Ever. “The only thing I could feel is pity”, James hears a small, unrecognizable smile shivering there, on the youthful face. “Pity that you were there and I here, and I was calling it unfair, even as I knew it couldn’t be. But now you’re here. You are really here. You came to me.”

“I’m not leaving”, James promises and leans back so Jeremy could see his genuine smile; the one that didn’t cause wrinkles, framed by soft, flowy strands of healthy, brown hair, pure, vibrant eyes, still not describable anyhow else but as an ocean under the savage thunderstorm. Voice warm, velvet-like and mellifluous, now pouring unhidden, altruistic love in those gentle, simple words.

“I’m here.”

Jeremy smiles, and James finally sees that youthful smile and there is Jeremy’s arm around his shoulder, warm and welcoming.

James lets him, of course he does because it matters, now he knows. It matters that Jeremy is here, with him, it matters that they are together and screw the emptiness if he cannot feel this warmth. It is a provision for importance and James knows, right now, what important means.

He wraps his own arm around Jeremy’s lower back, just as he has done painfully too few times during their lifetime and decides, as Jeremy’s chatterbox goes off and James knows he won’t stop for a long time, that it is going to stay there as long as it is given.


End file.
